Turkish Premier Blasts France Over Genocide Bill

Artur Bagdasarian, the speaker of the Armenian parliament, at the unveiling of a memorial in Marseille to the 'genocide' of Armenians this April (epa)
October 10, 2006 -- Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan today called on France to reflect on its own colonial past rather than attacking Turkey over the alleged genocide of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire.

The French parliament is due this week to debate a bill that would make it a criminal offence to deny that the massacres of Armenians during World War I constituted genocide.

(Reuters, dpa)

Examining History

CALL IT GENOCIDE? Questions surrounding the mass killings of Armenians at the beginning of the last century continue to dominate relations between Armenia and Turkey. In April,
Ankara proposed conducting a joint Armenian-Turkish investigation into the mass killings and deportations of Armenians during World War I. Turkish leaders suggested that the two countries set up a joint commission of historians to determine whether the massacres carried out between 1915 and 1917 constituted genocide. Armenia, however, insisted it would continue to seek international recognition and condemnation of what it says was a deliberate attempt at exterminating an entire people....(more)